THE KING IS ALIVE
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Zentropa Entertainments 5 & Newmarket Director: Kristian Levring Writer: Anders Thomas Jensen, Kristian Levring Cast: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Janet McTeer, Bruce Davison, Miles Anderson, Romane Bohringer, David Bradley, David Calder, Brion James, Peter Kubheka, Vusi Kunene, Chris Walker, Lia Williams
Robert Zemeckis' "Cast Away" explores what happens one an individual is trapped and isolated with nothing but a volleyball for a companion. Alfred Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" reveals what happens when shipwreck survivors are adrift in a lonely lifeboat during World War II, trapped not only with their compatriots with a Nazi whom they take on board. Kristian Levring's "The King is Alive" joins the many films that explore what happens when people are trapped, either alone or together, for extended periods of time. This type of setting is the essence of theater: put a few people in a room separate from the rest of society and watch the fireworks. What happens? What do you expect! All sophisticated film buffs realize that civilization is but a gossamer tapestry which could unravel under trying circumstances. Trap any group of people together for an extended and life-threatening period, whether they'd known one another or are strangers. Watch them tear one another apart, giving vent to their bottled resentments, frustrations, angers, and feelings of self-pity.
Kristian Levring gives his view of such an event in a theatrical piece co-written by Anders Thomas Jensen, adding emphasis by sticking to the Dogme 95 manifesto. Levring strips away not just his characters' veneer of civilization: he pares down all pretensions of fancy cinematography to focus exclusively on the bare bones of story. Using some improvisations of his talented and experienced actors together with the screenplay, Levring knocks out what could be called an intellectual horror story which unfortunately could remind us of the ghastly hit, "The Blair Witch Project," both in the dizzying use of handheld cameras and the unresolved conclusion of the tale. The skills of such major performers as Bruce Davison, Janet McTeer, Romane Bohringer and Jennifer Jason Leigh are not exactly wasted, but because of the predictability and repetitive nature of the story, our own patience is challenged and we in the audience summon up our own belligerence toward the work on the screen.
Filmed on location in the deserted southwest African mining town of Kolmanskop, Namibia, "The King is Alive" takes us on a small busload of people of mixed nationalities on a desert safari that goes awry when the electronic compass is find defective and the vehicle veers hundreds of miles from the beaten path. After Jack (Miles Anderson), an Australian confers with an aging African who watches all (Peter Khubeke), he decides to walk off alone for help letting the others know that he expects to be back within five days. As the anxiety-ridden vacationers wonder whether this will be their last trip, a former actor and writer Henry (David Bradley) copies "King Lear" from memory onto rolls of paper to distract the group from their plight. As Ashley (Brion James, who died a month after the completion of the film), Catherine (Romane Bohringer), Ray (Bruce Davison), Charles (David Calder), Gina (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Liz (Janet McTeer) and bus driver Moses (Vusi Huhene) rehearse their parts, the women tend to keep their control as though figures from a Lina Wertmuller movie while some of the men become emotionally (as well as physically) devastated by what transpires--particularly by the ways that the women release pent-up venom against them.
As we were leaving the screening, one member of the audience commented, "Isn't it something how a single actor, Tom Hanks, could hold and audience for about hour as the sole performer on the big screen in 'Cast Away?' And how this accomplished band of thesps in "The King is Alive" are mired in the sand by a script that simply travels in circles--like lost, compass-less voyagers who run through a one hundred ten minutes' story as though it were a twenty-minutes' journey five-and-one-half times told?
Rated R. Running time: 100 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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